[HAM] "Save Ours Seas" New song by Dan Bonow

[Scott Hawthorn]

At 07:29 PM 4/27/2008, John Freund wrote:
> > Oh yeah. If you're saying that only now, you might have missed the
> > earlier-posted "Too Blue." Dan's miracle-drummer, brother Tim, is back!
> > <www.danbonow.com/public/TooBlue-3rdRoughmix.mp3>
>
>Gotta tell ya, that is an excellent "open" drum sound you got there.  I
>could go for a little more definition in the kick drum (see below) but the
>drums are full and the brass has the necessary twinkle.  Tell me about your
>mike choice and config.  It sounds like either just overheads and kick (is
>the kick cheated to the left intentionally?) or maybe close mikes with well
>chosen room 'verb.

This is embarrassing. We were limited to eight inputs total during the 
live-takes portion of this recording, using a Hammerfall Fireface 
interface. With three Leslie mics (at Dan's insistence) and an organ DI, 
there wasn't much left for the drums. Four drum mics were mixed at input to 
a stereo pair. The pair was then tracked hard left and right. This is how 
the kick wound up off-center. And it wasn't loud enough on the track, my 
fault. There was an overhead Octava MC 012, and then two really crappy 
"drum mics" that came in a cheap drum mic kit. Besides the OH and kick, 
there were left and right gen'l mics, one of which was a spare SM 57. I'd 
say that any success with that drum sound was due to a lucky break with the 
Timeworks EQ plugin.   :-)  This was a home-built-by-Dan studio, with all 
surfaces treated, including the standard hippy bedspread hanging from the 
ceiling. Oh, the vocal mic (and doing double-duty on the Leslie woofer) was 
my Rode NT-1A.

>Also the lead organ ain't the clone is it?

You mean the organ that plays the little ditty at the opening? We call it 
"the little bird." That's my C-3, done in a later take. I designed that 
drawbar sound after being less than satisfied with Dan's original 080000000 
bird. The wondrous chords are played on the first session by the XK-1. 
Those chords really make the song.

> > >A bit o' compression on the voc
> > More then? What sound are we looking for? I'm an amateur. I compressed it
> > only enough to keep it from red-lining.
>That's exactly what you want to do on the way in - if necessary.  In mixing
>you're trying to get the vocal to sit in a consistent place within the
>track, but the trick is to do it with without crushing the dynamics of the
>performance or hearing the compression. [snip excellent description of 
>using compression.]

I'm using Timeworks Compressor at about a -6 dB threshold and maybe a 3:1 
ratio. To deal with the tremendous dynamic range, I use a carefully-made 
auto-volume track.

>notch that on the kick and you'll get some of your definition back,

It's tough when it's part of a stereo pair of all the drums.

>I'll share with you that I have a tetris
>approach to eq - if the guitar really lives at a certain freq, then see if
>the other instruments can live without so much of that frequency.

Yup, that's how I like to work, tho I confess I didn't do much of it on 
"Too Blue." Just lazy I guess.